


The 495th Watermelon Appreciation Festival

by plasterbrain



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Adventure, Disguise, Funny, Gen, Melodrama, Thief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 06:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plasterbrain/pseuds/plasterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marisa and Youmu go on a quest to find watermelon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The 495th Watermelon Appreciation Festival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mattecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattecat/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [touhou_meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/touhou_meme) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Something with Yuyuko, Youmu and Yukari. Can be shippy or not, it's up to you. (Yuyuko would be in the character tags except she's not canonical yet?? gosh)

“We have no watermelon.”

                The fact was simple enough, even so downright trivial as to make Marisa snicker. But she held it when she saw the look in the gardener’s eyes of _absolute conviction._

                She snuck a glance to the large fluttering banner Yukari was arranging. It was a big white tarp with booze stains in it. The words _495 th_ _Watermelon Appreciation Festival_ were slathered on in wet red paint like blood (always a possibility, Marisa thought) in distinctly drunken handwriting. Yukari was tying the edge of the thing around a tree branch, comfortably perched atop Ran’s shoulders, while Ran was perched atop Chen’s.

                Back to Youmu. She was saying something now, _important_ this and _responsibility_ that, but Marisa wasn’t listening. She was intently focused on a particular outcrop of eyebrow in desperate need of plucking, which made Youmu look like a muppet, or a drug peddler.

                “This is just such a disgrace in a long line of disgraces,” Youmu said. “No watermelon at the four-hundred and ninety-fifth Watermelon Appreciation Festival! This is an annual celebration of the greatest food to grow on vines, and we have none!”

                “Grow some more,” Marisa offered.

                Youmu hit Marisa on the head with a shovel.

                “I’ve got to imagine Miss Yuyuko’s the one who’s done it.” She began to pace back and forth. “Oh, dishonor in a long line of dishonors! I can’t believe I let her go unmonitored!”

                “Probably tore through like a Jethro Tull.” Youmu looked at her and nodded earnestly.

                The only other commodities being offered that evening were plain crackers and Nitori’s Number One Patented Superjuice, guaranteed to “enhance the watermelon flavor,” though it was certain that the guests would have all hidden whiskey flasks on their persons. When they first began their investigation, Reimu suggested they arrange the crackers into watermelon shapes.

                “Arrange the crackers into watermelon shapes,” said Reimu, pressing her hands together. “Those things are so mundane, nobody would even notice anyway. Hell, you’d be doing us a favor.”

                Marisa scratched her head. “Watermelon shapes? You mean a circle?”

                “Yeah, a circle,” Reimu said.

                Youmu hit Reimu on the head with a shovel.

                As they passed Yukari, Ran, and Chen covering tables with tablecloth, Youmu devised a list of possible candidates. She held up this list and studied it with a look of chef’s disgust. Yuyuko frankly occupied the first four entries, followed by Marisa, and then Tewi.

                “That Tewi’s a rascal,” Youmu said. “She’ll get ya every time.”

                “Why am I number five?” whined Marisa.

                “I remember back in ’98 when I lost ten acres of corn to those meddling rabbits.”

                “Why am I number five?” whined Marisa.

               “But first we have consider the clues.” She swung her shovel, deep in thought. “What motive could the robber possibly have for stealing all this watermelon?”

               “They were hungry.” Kogasa had appeared behind them, goofy umbrella in tow. Its tongue and her tongue both lolled about like a dead person’s. She looked at both girls. “Did I scare you?”

               She had not scared them.

               “But yes,” continued Youmu, now hot on the trail. “They were _hungry!_ And who do we know in Gensokyo who’s _always hungry_?” Her eyes were like flaming emeralds.

               “Vampire lady!” said Kogasa.

               “Why am I number five?” whined Marisa.

               Youmu slapped her forehead and probably also hit them with a shovel. “Failure in a long line of failures, no!” she said. “The answer was Miss Yuyuko! Which,” – her finger began to trace down the list numbers – “incidentally covers numbers one, two, three, and four.”

               “But not five,” said Marisa, her hands on her hips.

               “It’s obvious who our culprit is, girls! We know who stole the watermelon! Let’s go and save the day!” The three of them charged for imminent victory across the field outside the Hakurei Shrine.”

               Yuyuko’s lips were pursed, and her cheeks doughy, and her face tender, when she asked them sincerely what a watermelon is.

               “What’s a watermelon?” asked Yuyuko, sincerely, her lips pursed, cheeks doughy, and face tender as she asked them this.

               Yuyuko munched on the mundane crackers.

               Youmu was having none of it. “But you’re supposed to be the culprit!” she cried. “Impossibility in a long line of impossibilities!”

               “It’s true; I’m afraid I have no idea what a watermelon is.” Yukari, Ran, and Chen, were over by the arranged tables, fixing up plates and utensils in anticipation of the prized watermelon. Chen carried a piece of cheese, her single tail lashing back and forth.

               Kogasa didn’t seem dejected. “Don’t worry, green lady!” She bobbled up and down like breasts on a girls’ track team. “I’m sure it was the vampire who did it!”

               “We accused the vampire of stealing something _last week,_ ” Marisa groaned. “I’m pretty sure she would have learned her lesson like a good Samaritan by now. Stealing is pretty serious business. I would never steal.”

               “You dropped this,” said Youmu, handing her Utsuho’s cannon, which had just moments ago fallen from Marisa’s pantaloons. Marisa thanked her, before returning it to a burlap sack.

               Yuyuko offered to help them search the world of the dead, her mouth full of starches, using her dead person powers. It was unclear to any of them why the dead would steal a supply of watermelon, but their few leads had them following her down the trail to a large geyser in the ground, where weeds had begun to spring up. Youmu’s thumbs twitched at the sight of them.

               “This is where the dead people should be coming through in about an hour, when the party starts. But we could probably go down there early and ask them if they’ve seen your, um—…”

               “Watermelon,” supplied Marisa.

               Satori was wearing curlers in her greasy pink hair when the girls intruded on her estate. Orin brought them to the parlor, first, and then the master bathroom, where her lady was staring in the mirror, chatting all the while about how she was thinking of opening up a steak place (the kappa had said it would be a good idea). They now numbered six: Orin led the investigating Youmu and Marisa, with Kogasa beating along behind for her own amusement and because she is not smart enough to have anything else to do, and Yuyuko (who had agreed that walking was good for the digestion and wearily joined them), and Cirno, who had offered them her services as an underworld bodyguard.

               “Gosh, it’s hot in here,” said Cirno, who hit herself with a lazy fan. Her wings slobbered icy water all down her wet dress back, which she now and then dabbed at with a handkerchief. “Let’s go outside.”

               The mistress evidently didn’t want to. As she put it, “It’s absolutely _sordid_ out there.” She had not been happy or willing to receive them, but the biceps on Cirno were _awfully_ intimidating, so she couldn’t chase them away, either.

               Satori began to understand her life as remarkably Darwinist.

               In any case, she had no idea where the watermelons were, although, to her credit, that woman was familiar with the concept. She also inquired into the cannon-shaped bulge in Marisa’s pantaloons, vaguely commenting on a similar missing cannon belonging to one of her pet birds.

               “No idea,” babbled Marisa uselessly.

               With no word on watermelons and Satori shooing them out of the building like pigeons, the girls took the AMAZING DEATH TRAM back to the upper world. Reimu was waiting for them at the exit.

               “Where did you guys go?” she asked, drumming her foot in concern. “The party starts in less than thirty minutes. Where’s our watermelon?”

               Youmu only shook her head. The search continued.

               Back at base camp things had steadily improved. The outdoor structures had all been set up and the Prismrivers were in place tuning their instruments for the meager entertainment. The Scarlet Devil Mansion-goers had arrived early, Remilia gracefully poised beneath a great black umbrella like a breakable lily with her maidens streaming along after. Flandre had been placed in a play pen remarkably reminiscent of a jail cell, where she sat with Miyako and the two of them chewed on plastic.

               Chen and Ran and Yukari had stopped to rest at one of the tables out in the field.

               “Raowr, I’m stuffed!” Marisa overheard the cat say. She patted her stomach with the flat of her hand in grotesque, fat motions. Ran only looked across the field sagely. Yukari was asleep in her chair.

               Suika came bumbling around them, shouting something slurred and botched to the arriving Scarlet party, when she suddenly tripped over Chen’s lanky tail.

                The sound she let out nearly deafened the loose crowd. The sound Suika let out was no better. While those two of them found themselves shrieking hysterically, Marisa’s attention was drawn to the python-like nature of the tail, which now flapped up and down like an angry fish. It was much longer than she remembered.

                It hit her like the burn of curling iron.

                “Youmu,” said Marisa, pausing on each syllable to get her facts right, “how many tails does Chen have?”

                Her comrade cried, “Obvious things in a long line of obvious things! She has two.” Youmu looked at her strangely. “Chen has two tails.”

                “No recent freak accidents or stunt tattoos or anything like that?”

                “Um, no. Not that I remember.”

                Together they watched the lashing single tail, leading into a cat girl who batted at Suika with a fierce paw from her seat. It took Youmu a fraction of a moment to draw her sword and go charging.

                “Imposter in a long line of imposters!” she roared, nearly slicing Chen in two. The shinigami rolled over her chair and out of the way, hissing at this new foe.”

                “Ran! Yukari! They’re bullying me!” Chen darted her eyes at her friends in a quick cry of help. Ran said nothing. Yukari mumbled something inaudible in her sleep.

                Youmu came back with a _swish_. “Tell me who you are, demon!” _Swat. Swat. Swat._ “And why you stole our watermelon! The festival cannot continue with this disgrace in a long line of disgraces!”

                Chen leaped backwards and looked up, the auburn bangs hanging in her frighteningly large eyes. She paused for a moment and breathed on a high whistling note, a killer behind a Halloween mask.

               “So you figured it out,” she said at long last. Chen’s tail and hair suddenly lost color in droves, and her cat ears folded into themselves like fortune tellers and from those sprouts burgeoned two new mouse ears, thick as day like round dinner plates, and it was not Chen’s eyes that met the gardener’s, then, but Nazrin’s.

               “And here I thought I’d gotten away with it, too!” cried Nazrin. “After my cheese went missing, my people began to starve! The little mice came to me saying, ‘Oh Nazrin, what is there to eat?’ But there was nothing! So what was I to do when just then and there appears before me a tasty patch of watermelons? When Mamizu leant me her transformation powers, I knew what had to be done.”

               “No excuses!” Youmu matched her. The two of them circled each other in quickening paces, while the other girls gave wide birth. “Tell me where you’ve hidden the rest or your life ends here!” Suika still thought she was arguing with someone over by the table. Marisa took out the cannon hidden in her pants and began to study the various designs in it. Yuyuko took the empty seat by Yukari and fell swiftly asleep.

               Nazrin snickered at first, at this, and then began to chuckle, before at last erupting into hysterically raucous laughter, letting it fill the air of the park just as more arriving guests began to fill the field.

               “I ATE ALL THE WATERMELON!” she screamed, her voice sharp and horrid and screaming. And she fell down on her knees that day and began to sob.

               Youmu heard this, and dropped her sword, too, and she too stuttered with a wetness to her teeth.

               “Why do we fight?” she whispered. “Why is it we must kill each other to accomplish in society? Cannot man make progress without the vehicle of this crude torture?” And she wept into her own arms.

               There were cries of surprise over by grove where the trees began, women’s cries, and Remilia had fallen. Her hands were on her face, her arms on her knees and her legs in her chest, and she cried, “O woe!” to all of Meiling’s reassuring pitter patter.

               All around them girls broke down and started crying; even Satori, whose fine, curly hair fell instantly flat the moment she touched the ground, and that made her cry too. Marisa studied them nonchalantly, but decided to throw the cannon aside as a mark of good sportsmanship. She figured then she should find Reimu, who had run off somewhere, perhaps to mourn her wasted life of mistakes, for she alone was the only one who had kept a straight face through it all and had also not been drunk. Yuugi had arrived and neither oni had an idea what the hell was going on.

               Nazrin scraped herself slowly across the dirt-trodden field, leaving grass stains across her dress, or Chen’s dress, so she could lie with Youmu. The two of them could only look at each other and cry, for all the humanity, for a very long time. Then finally, Youmu said:

               “O Sister, why is it thou ever stole the watermelons? What gaping hole was there in your spirit to fill?”

               Nazrin said earnestly, “As I have told you, beloved, our family of mice meets a simple problem. We have no cheese.”

               The fact was simple enough, even so downright trivial as to make Marisa snicker. But she held it when she saw the look in the mouse’s eyes of _absolute conviction._

 


End file.
